Coverage of high school ball is about to blow up around the internet over the next few days with the NHSI starting up today in beautiful Cary, North Carolina. Naturally, the actual list below has nothing to do with that, other than the fact that I have driven those around me — especially the gal who inexplicably chooses to live with me — to the point of insanity with my all too often refrain of “man, I can’t believe I didn’t get that post about Player X before his huge game yesterday got him tons of online ink…now when I mention him, everybody will assume I’m just stealing somebody else’s scouting report and hopping on the bandwagon.” Not saying I don’t keep my eyes glued on Twitter for updates like any good draft fan, just saying that I think I’ve built up enough goodwill around here over the years that most people realize I’m not the crazy reactionary move a guy up 50 spots because one national writer saw four life-altering at bats type of hack. I’m a hack in a million other ways, obviously, but don’t believe that’s one of them. And yet here I sit still getting nervous about people assuming the worst about me hence the need for the preceding disclaimer. Sorry to go all meta on you, just working through some stuff.

There are a few players listed below who will be in Cary — and more than a few have been blown up the last few weeks on the internet already, Bukauskas and Adams being arguably the most notable — but the real purpose here is to highlight quality early-round talents that have caught my eye at one point or another over the past few months. I debated on whether or not to exclude some of the super obvious names on here, but figured it couldn’t hurt to make mention of my affection for the Jackson’s, Gatewood’s, and Aiken’s of the world. It’s also worth noting that the FAVORITE tag gets put on a guy as soon as it feels right; I won’t BS you and say Gatewood has been a FAVORITE since middle school or anything, but hopefully it is understood that the bigger names have had the label slapped on them for many months at this point. Lastly, a player not getting the FAVORITE tag doesn’t mean he isn’t damn good; case in point, an absolute stone cold top of the first round talent in Tyler Kolek isn’t a FAVORITE for whatever reason, but he’s still really awesome and I’d be pretty pleased if he fell to the Phillies at 7.

I also like to use my FAVORITES list as a personal shopping cart of sorts on draft day. If I was a greedy scouting director, I’d be hoping for at least five of these bats and three of the arms signing contracts with my team this summer. Not sure how realistic that is at this point — those numbers are as low as I’m willing to go in my dream world — so it’ll be fun to check back in mid-June to see how possible hitting those targets will be.

Finally, since you know I hate lists without some kind of added value, I am planning on adding notes about why I love as many as these prospects as I can get to throughout the day. Posting will then be fairly light for a few days as I’m off to go watch some of the names below myself starting Thursday…

• C Alex Jackson
• C Simeon Lucas
• C Evan Skoug
• 1B Jeremy Vazquez
• 1B Bobby Bradley
• 2B Max George
• 2B Isan Diaz
• 2B Jack Gerstenmaier
• 2B Shane Mardirosian
• SS Ti’Quan Forbes
• SS Josh Morgan
• 3B Jacob Gatewood
• 3B Jack Flaherty
• 3B Charlie Cody
• OF Braxton Davidson
• OF Marcus Wilson
• OF Stone Garrett
• OF Zach Shannon
• OF Monte Harrison
• OF Carl Chester
• OF Derek Hill
• OF Jeren Kendall
• LHP Brady Aiken
• RHP Dylan Cease
• RHP Jacob Bukauskas
• RHP Cameron Varga
• RHP Jonathan Teaney
• RHP Keaton McKinney
• RHP Spencer Adams
• LHP Kodi Medeiros
• RHP Sean Reid-Foley
• RHP Cobi Johnson
• RHP Bryan Dobzanski
• RHP TOUKI TOUSSAINT